Every year, our kids sell popcorn for Cub Scouts. One of the perks is that at the end of the selling cycle, the amount sold is tabulated for each child/scout, and the final number will then determine how many PIES you get. What are the PIES for, you ask? To smash into the face of your respective Cub Scout leader. And in this case, my beloved wife is one of the leaders, and therefore would then spend an evening getting whipped cream PIES thrown, smeared, and smacked into her face. I fully intended to have a front row seat, popcorn in hand, enjoying every minute of it, phone on record for future enjoyment… couldn’t wait.
Until…
My wife recently had surgery to correct a deviated septum, and was told (by a medical expert, no less) that allowing a herd of devious, sugar-laden preteens with a penchant for blood and destruction to pepper her face with PIES would be a bad idea. The solution? Have your husband, yours truly, sit in and take the punches, or PIES in this case.
So, I’m sitting in a chair, a tarp underneath me Goodfellas-style, wearing a garbage bag as a poncho, questioning the life choices that led me to this moment. The first wave of kids came up, with my youngest son Matthew being one of them. To nobody’s surprise my son had zero intention of hitting any of the other parents or leaders… just me. A couple of the other kids got me too, but it was only a few. Once my wife’s Scout group was done, I thought my obligation would be done.
Nope
Apparently, the plan the whole time was to keep me up there, on the tarp, wearing the poncho, in the line of fire, taking pie after pie, for every Scout group, all the while sitting under a sign that read “Pie your leader, OR CHAD”. Children were chanting, PIES were flying, and fun was had by all.
Until..
Whipped cream is a refrigerated product. As the evening went on, the PIES became soggier and runnier, to the point that it would run down into my eyes, then further down under the poncho and onto my shirt and pants, and even further down to places we will try not to mention in too much detail.
The whipped cream will transition from cool and somewhat intact, to an oily, runny liquid. It will then dry and become sticky, so your hair becomes a helmet, and clothes will latch to you, and any two body parts that make contact will be unpleasant getting apart. And the stuff gets EVERYWHERE. It’s a lot like sand.. you’ll get home from the beach and you’re picking sand out from between your toes, your ears.. same thing. Whipped cream EVERYWHERE. What little sense of smell I have left (thanks, COVID) will randomly detect pie filling hours and even DAYS later.
After the events unfolded, some questions remain. Did my wife plan her surgery KNOWING it would excuse her from this event? What was her part in not only volunteering me (the term I heard somebody use was VOLUNTOLD.. catchy), but requiring me to stay up in the crosshairs of the pie-wielding mob for the rest of the evening. And who were her coconspirators? I will get answers, once I get the whipped cream out of my ears and less mentionable places.